Gospel of Mark Readthrough : 1:4 - 1:8

Text: John the Baptist Prepares the Way

4. And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Commentary

It's interesting what there isn't at the beginning of Mark. There's no complicated geanalogy of Jesus[1] being descended from Abraham or God. There's no complicated circumstance that someone to Bethlehem[3]. There's no stories of teenage Jesus and the superfriends doing minor miracles. He turns up from Nazareth, as yet (perhaps) not really known.

I find the existence of John the Baptist interesting too. Lots of mythological gods have some sort of forerunners, but it's interesting that Jesus needed to get his body baptised: it somehow doesn't feel like the sort of thing people would have invented if they were inventing stories, and Mark reports/asserts an explicit denial of John being an incarnation of Elijah, which would be an obvious plot twist if you were playing "lets make Jesus fit as many more old testament prophecies as possible". In fact, all that inclines me to think that this bit actually happened (?)

Am I right that baptism was known before John the Baptist amongst Judaism at the time, even if now its associated primarily (only?) with Christianity?

[1] Although, funnily enough, I don't accept the objection many people have that it's nonsensical to list the ancestors of Joseph. It's unfair that patrilineal descent was considered more important than matrilineal descent. And I don't think that being distantly descended from anyone gives anyone special spiritual rights. But everyone agrees children get something from their non-biological parents, so if there is anything you get from being descended from Adam, I don't see why Jesus can't get it from Joseph. After all, even if there were a miraculous parthenogenesis conception, I don't suppose God literally created a "god sperm", so who knows where the other half of the chromosomes came from if the people at the time didn't know enough biology to interrogate Gabriel in detail?[2]

[2] See also the old joke that "Jesus H Christ" stands for "Jesus Haploid Christ".

[3] When I was younger, I remember being confused between "Jerusalem", "Nazareth" and "Bethlehem". Everyone knew "Bethlehem" because young children are taught the nativity story. So why Nazareth? Mark is pleasingly straightforward: Jesus came from Nazareth. Later on, it just so happens that people suddenly rememebred that Jesus was born in the same city as King David. Eventually, he goes to the capital and raises hell.

Teaching bridge

When I was talking with Liv, one thing I found surprisingly helpful was to deal a few sample hands, practice bidding them without any interfering bids from opponents, and talk through what we'd expected. That seemed useful for rapidly coming to a consensus about the most common things, without requiring either of us to guess what the other person might do differently and ask about it.

Conversely, there's the question of, if you're playing casually, but actually keeping score, how long should you go on feeling able to pause and say "ok, what's the convention for this situation"? I think it's similar to letting someone take a move back in chess, or playing with a chess clock, or accepting mild kibitzing from spectators, except that in Chess, those are practically the ONLY possible sources of interference, whereas in a partnership game with hidden information, there are millions of possible infractions. Some people say it doesn't matter if you ever progress to the point where you're playing "properly", but most people I know deliberately want to improve. Others are scared of never improving and think everyone ought to be held to club standard from the beginning.

I'm normally happy to let people go on being casual as long as they need (as long as they're not blatantly taking advantage). The rules for "what you should do when partner forgets a convention or lets something slip in their expression to avoid taking advantage" have accrued for good reason, but I think people who think they're comprehensible to complete beginners are deluding themselves. Yes, you shouldn't go to a club until you're able to cope with that, and you should recognise the sorts of things you should avoid, but the actual competition rules are as complicated as the bidding rules themselves (or more so, and more subjective), so recognise that beginners have to be taught, and aren't born knowing what it means if you say "oh, you did [bad thing X you don't understand] so the score will be [X for no reason you understand" :)

It's good to progress to the point where you DO understand what partner's bids mean, but you if you don't yet know some basic things, it's plausible to not play at all (though I think it's less fun) and it's plausible to just let people say "hang on, is that weak or strong", but I don't think getting tragic miscommunications on 80% of hands actually teaches people anything. (I think this happens when you have a beginner pair and a somewhat-better pair, and they both HOPE they can play together without a big culture clash, and don't realise that what's most helpful to one may not be as helpful to the other.)